Animal rights groups sue state, branding farm rules inhumane

Agriculture agency defends confinement, hen-stressing techniques

Wednesday, July 21, 2004
BY ALEXANDER LANE
Star-Ledger Staff

A coalition of animal rights groups sued the state yesterday for allowing farmers a range of techniques that the groups consider cruel, including confining breeding pigs in small crates, tying up veal calves and stressing hens to induce extra egg laying.

The Department of Agriculture authorized such techniques in a set of farming rules that took effect in June. In the lawsuit, filed yesterday in the Appellate Division of Superior Court, the animal rights activists argued that the rules were not faithful to a 1996 state law in which the Legislature required "standards for humane raising, keeping, care, treatment, marketing, and sale of domestic livestock."

"The idea in New Jersey was to ensure that animals were treated humanely," said Debora Bresch, an attorney with one of the groups, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "We feel that objectively these practices are inhumane."

The Department of Agriculture released a statement saying it stood by the standards, which were developed after staff members consulted outside experts and hundreds of scientific journals and animal husbandry texts. It also said the standards would be reviewed "on an ongoing basis."

Also joining in the lawsuit were Farm Sanctuary and the Humane Society of the United States. The suit highlighted New Jersey's status as a battlefield in the national debate over farm practices, despite the relative scarcity here of so- called "factory farms."

Farmers had lobbied for the 1996 law, complaining that rogue animal protection officers were enforcing overly stringent standards. For example, people hauling horses were being pulled over to side of the road and fined if there was no water available in the trailer, said Ed Wengryn, a field representative for the New Jersey Farm Bureau.

But the law became a rallying point for animal rights activists, who argued that in drawing up regulations to enforce it, the agriculture department should exclude various controversial farming practices.

That did not happen. Among other practices, the rules allow forced molting -- stressing chickens into an extra egg-laying cycle by withholding food and water or manipulating the temperature -- along with the tethering and confining of veal calves and the use of small gestation crates to prevent breeding pigs from moving around.

"These are science-based standards taught by the major agricultural universities," Wengryn said. "We will agree some things, like forced molting, sound horrible on the surface. But when you understand the process and how it's done, it makes sense and it's not harmful to the animal. Those are the tradeoffs that we make in our food society."

New Jersey has no veal industry to speak of, though about a quarter or half of the state's 146 dairy farms raise a few veal calves a year, Wengryn said. Gestation crates also do not see widespread use in New Jersey, since most of the state's hog farms are finishing farms that buy their pigs elsewhere, Wengryn said.

New Jersey does have its share of forced molting, a common technique in the egg industry, Wengryn said. The state has three large egg producers, including ISE America Inc., an international corporation based in Japan. Over a million chickens are raised at a time at ISE's facility in Franklin Township, Warren County.